


that which is worth waiting for

by ryfkah



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: Here, in these peaceful days in Roa, where the only threat was Costis bringing home a creature with stingers, or Kamet studying his eyes into a stupor – here, they had each other, and they had time.So Kamet thought, before he heard the rumors of the Mede.
Relationships: Kamet/Costis Ormentiedes
Comments: 15
Kudos: 84
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	that which is worth waiting for

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lirazel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/gifts).



Even in Roa, in the days of peace, all professions had hazards. For Kamet, the hazards of spending most of his days squinting at old texts in the library included headaches that settled over his temples with increasing frequency. 

The headaches weren’t unfamiliar; in his role as Nahuseresh’s scribe, he’d found them a near-constant companion. During the long days that he and Costis had spent scrambling for survival through the Mede Empire, he’d been so beset with other difficulties that he’d nearly forgotten to be thankful for the small mercy that was their absence. He regretted this now that they’d returned. Kamet of all people should know not to take any small mercies for granted. 

Still, it did not occur to him to say anything about it until Costis asked him point-blank one evening: “Kamet, does your head hurt?”

Kamet had been more or less unconsciously rubbing his temples as he frowned at the document on his desk. He dropped his hand to frown at Costis. The pain shifted as he turned his head, rising and splashing through his skull like water. “And so?” 

“My sister used to get headaches like that, from doing the accounts,” said Costis. “I could help sometimes.” He hesitated, then held up his fingers. “If you wanted me to?”

Kamet eyed him. Head massages were the sort of thing Nahuseresh might get from a body attendant; Kamet had always thought of them as a sort of sensual luxury, like a silk pillow, or an expensive perfume. They were not something he associated with himself. 

Still, he reminded himself, he was trying to be better about accepting Costis’ small offered kindnesses. He said, carefully, “I don’t know that it will help. It’s generally best just to wait it out.” 

Costis shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to try.” 

Kamet got up from his desk, repressing a grimace as he did so, and sat on the ground in front of Costis’ chair. His back had to stay very stiff to avoid leaning against Costis’ legs. When the warm pressure of Costis’ hands came down on his head, he jumped before he could stop himself. 

As far as helping him relax enough to dispel the headache, this did not seem promising. He managed to bite his tongue before saying so to Costis. The offer was kind. It was not Costis’ fault that Kamet could not easily reduce the physicality of his presence to a pair of useful hands. 

Slowly, Costis began moving his thumbs and forefingers in small circles over Kamet’s scalp and hairline. “My sister,” he remarked, “used to say I should teach her husband how to do this, before I left for the Guard. I suppose he learned eventually. I should ask her, next time I’m home.”

Next time Costis was home – well, who knew when that would be. Kamet didn’t answer for a few moments, then remarked, startled, as he realized, “It does hurt less.” 

He realized when Costis laughed in response just how unflattering the surprise in his voice had probably been. “Does it? Well, I’m glad.” 

There didn’t really seem a need to respond to that. Costis’ fingers ran again and again through his hair. As long as they were moving, the pain receded. There was a sturdy Attolian knee just behind him; Kamet tilted his head back, and closed his eyes, and thought about nothing at all except the slow, soothing strength of Costis’ hands. 

He only intended to indulge in this for a few minutes, at most. He woke some time later to the first light of dawn coming through the window, and the sound of Costis snoring in the chair above him. 

When he sat upright, Costis startled too, and then blinked down at him. “How’s your head?”

Annoyingly, it was undeniably still better. “You shouldn’t fall asleep like that,” said Kamet. He did not in fact know which of them had fallen asleep first, and suspected it was himself. “Your back will ache. What’s the use of trading one pain for another?” 

Costis only smiled. “I’m glad it helped. Ask me again, next time it hurts.”

“I’ll just come to your bed next time,” grumbled Kamet, and only realized what he had said when Costis choked, and then turned red.

“Kamet?” he said, stupidly. 

Kamet felt warmth rising to his own cheeks, and refused to acknowledge it. ‘Sit by’, he should probably have said, not ‘come to’. Still, it had been a perfectly reasonable remark to make, in context, even in Attolian. He would not wheel and retreat like an embarrassed adolescent. “I said, I’ll come to your bed,” he repeated, with precision, “so when you can’t keep your eyes open anymore, you can just fall asleep where you are, and not sit propped up in a chair all night as if we don’t have furniture intended for the purpose.”

He waited for Costis to laugh, and remind Kamet that he was a soldier, and used to sleeping anywhere. It would be easy enough for him to move past the moment. Kamet had not made it strange. 

Instead, Costis said, “Oh,” face still pink, and swallowed, and then said, “All right. Do that, then.”

Kamet’s heart gave a wild thump. “All right,” he echoed. He pushed himself to his feet, and turned away, before his face could show more than he wanted it to. “It’s dawn already. I’m going to dress.”

He moved out of their common room and back to his own, fighting against the sudden tendency of his mouth to want to curve at the corners. 

The pain in his head really had gone. Inevitably it would at some point return. Anticipation curled slightly in his stomach at the thought – anticipation of what, he refused to articulate, even in his own mind. That was a sure way to sour it. 

The thought occurred that he did not, technically, have to wait for a real headache to tell Costis that his head hurt, and see what unfolded from there. He dismissed it immediately. He was a free man; he could speak what he wished straightforwardly, or he could wait for events to unfold in a natural fashion, and if he was not quite ready to do the former, there was no reason, now, not to expect the latter. What would come, would come. There was no need to rush things along or cheat them. Here, in these peaceful days in Roa, where the only threat was Costis bringing home a creature with stingers, or Kamet studying his eyes into a stupor – here, they had each other, and they had time.

It was the next day that he heard the rumor that the Mede commissioners were paying good coin for as much grain and livestock as anyone had to sell. 

*

Anything you have can be taken from you. Nothing you have is yours, not even time; especially not time. That was a lesson Kamet had learned long ago. He could not understand how he had forgotten this, even for a moment, even as someone who called himself a free man. 

Costis held Kamet’s shoulders between his hands, and looked at him with that terrible Attolian earnestness. “Once I have warned them,” he said, “I will come back.”

This was a lie – and the worst kind of lie, in that it came from Costis, who prided himself on his honesty, and thus had really convinced himself it was true. What would in fact happen was that Costis would go back to Attolia, and warn his king, and be pulled straight away into his war. Kamet knew whom Costis served, and where his oaths of loyalty lay. 

That was, of course, if he survived at all. Either way, it seemed very likely that Kamet would never see him again. 

He wanted to shout this in Costis’ face. He wanted to leave him hurting with the knowledge of loss, and see the echo of his own pain in his face, to know they were equals in it. Instead, he smiled at Costis, and said, “Yes. Of course. I’ll be here.” 

Let them both be liars. Kamet had often been one before. He could allow Costis, for a little longer, the luxury of believing that he had spoken the truth. 

Costis hesitated, and then, abruptly, leaned close. Kamet stood very still, his heart buzzing. He did not know whether Costis was aiming for his cheek or his lips, and he was not sure that Costis knew either. In the end, the kiss landed with awkward force on the corner of Kamet’s mouth. 

Almost as soon as it had happened, Costis pulled away again. His back very straight, he repeated, “I will come back.”

And then he was gone, leaving Kamet alone in Roa.

*

Every day for the past month, Kamet had thought: today is the day I will leave.

The Mede was coming. That was now beyond a doubt. If Nahuseresh was at all involved, it seemed very likely that they would come for him, Kamet, specifically, and what happened next would not be pleasant. Even if Costis had gotten through with his message, the Attolians could not win against seventy thousand men. Even if they could win, they could not protect Kamet here beyond the borders of the Little Peninsula. 

Kamet had paid his debt to Eugenides and more; he had paid by sending Costis home with a dangerous truth, and a smiling lie. There would be no shame in taking the last of the coin that the Annux had sent for them to live on and using it to flee while time still remained.

If time still remained. Probably he had already dallied here too long. 

And yet, each day, more news trickled down from the approaching army that could be of use if there was anyone to share it with, and Kamet came and went from the town to the library to the empty house he had shared with Costis, and went once again to ensure he had everything he would need in the bag he had packed, and did not leave.

And then there was the day he came back from the library, and reached out to open the door to their apartment in the temple complex, and heard someone moving in the house. 

Stupid! Stupid! Kamet had not thought to bring the pack with him to the library; he should not have gone anywhere without it. He should have been ready. Now he would not have the blanket roll, the disguise he had carefully prepared, the gods-cursed _cookpot_ – 

He had already backed several feet away, was preparing to run back the way he had come, when the door flew open, framing Costis. 

“I thought I heard you,” he said. He looked absolutely exhausted. Kamet’s heavy pack was slung over one of his broad shoulders. “Are you ready? Let’s go.”

“Go?” sputtered Kamet, just as if he had not been saying the same thing to himself on more or less a constant loop for the past several weeks. “Go where?”

Costis jerked his head off in the general direction of the hills. “The hut –”

“The hut?” Costis had spoken to Kamet of the hut. Once, he had taken him there to proudly show it off. All Kamet remembered of it was that a sheep had spit up its cud on his shoes. “The Mede is coming and you want to hide in a hut?”

Costis blinked at him. “Where were you planning to go?”

“ _Away!_ ”

“Kamet,” said Costis, reasonably, “I’m sure if you think about it you’ll see that it will be far more dangerous to try and get through the Mede lines than to –”

“Why are you back?” demanded Kamet. He stared up at Costis, at the dust on his face, the shadows under his eyes, the deepening lines on his face as his brow began to furrow up in righteous indignation. 

“You think I –”

“I think you swore an oath,” said Kamet, bluntly. At some point, without realizing it, he had folded his arms in front of him, a barrier between them. Costis’ impossible sincerity felt almost like a physical attack. “You are skilled and loyal, a favorite of the king’s, and for reasons far better than most kings take favorites. The king and queen of Attolia had no reason to release you. You are also intelligent, so I surely thought you would realize all this on the way. I did not expect to see you again.” 

Costis took a deep breath, all the way in, then blew it out again and scrubbed a dirty lock off hair out of his face. “I don’t actually think that’s true.”

“I think I know what –”

“If it was true,” said Costis, thoughtfully, “you would be gone. But you waited. You're still here.” He gave Kamet a sudden quick smile – almost shy, which made it strange that it should be at the same time so insufferable. “I never doubted you would be, Kamet. Not for a second.” 

Kamet shut his eyes, and said, despairingly, “Oh, _gods_.”

He exhaled, then opened his eyes again. “I have studied much more than you,” he said. “It’s really not prideful to say that. Anyone would objectively agree. I am much better-educated than you, and everything I have learned tells me that you ought to be considered naive, and I should be wise.” He put his hands over his face, so as not to look at Costis as he admitted: “So why, when it comes to these matters, do I always seem to be the fool? You’re right, of course. Of course you’re right. How do you know me better than I know myself?”

Costis opened his mouth. Costis shut his mouth. Costis said, with equal levels of despair, “Kamet, I haven’t seen you in a month, and we _really_ have got to go as fast as possible, can I tell you how you’re the other half my life on the way? Please?” 

Kamet choked, which was probably the opposite of Costis’ intent. Then: “All right,” he said, defeated, and unfolded his arms, and held out his hand for his pack. “To the hut, and the sheep, and your rockheaded Attolian idea of remaining safe by staying perfectly still, I suppose. Thank the gods I have such a paragon here to protect me.”

Costis’ shoulders relaxed in relief. “Thank _you_ ,” he said, seriously, “for remembering to pack the cookpot.”


End file.
